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All Rise...

Judge Daryl Loomis walks down dark and mysterious paths.

The Charge

"Look. Your love fever turned on the light of night."

The Case

Nobody ever accused producer/director Aristide Massaccesi (Emanuelle in Bangkok) of
originality, but whether he was credited as Joe D'Amato, Alexandre Borsky, David
Hills, or Joan Russell, he always delivered perversion and violence like few
others in the exploitation game. Playing off the success of 1991's Sex and
Zen, he assumed the name of Robert Yip (which he used any time he made an
Asian-themed film) to helm China and Sex, a weird and terrible journey
into the Far East where, apparently, certain prostitutes wield destructive
sexual powers.

A Mandarin prince (Marc Gosalvez, Chinese Kamasutra) has visited
every brother in the province, but has yet to find a woman who can satisfy is
desires. That is, until he enters the establishment that employs Tama (Lora
Luna, The Labyrinth of Love), an angel of desire and the most beautiful
woman he's ever seen. She can't be bought, though, not with all the money in his
royal coffers. Instead, he must supplicate himself in front of her, give up his
arrogance, and only then will he have her, but under her terms. Once she finally
agrees, she takes him through levels of pleasure and pain, only to find horror
at the end of the journey.

The back of the box claims that China and Sex is one of the best
latter day efforts from the director. Though I'm mostly acquainted with his '80s
work, if that's true, then his other work from the following decade must be
absolutely woeful attempts at cinema. His earlier work may not have been a
bastion of artistic integrity, but at least the stories made a little bit of
sense and carried an air of sexual adventure. This pile of garbage, on the other
hand, features some of the dullest examples of softcore erotica that I've
witnessed in a long time.

The highlight of the film is the explicit and gruesome finale, which is the
only part of it I can support. The dialog, with all the talk of the melding of
pleasure and pain, sounds like it was written by Pinhead in a moment of
seduction and the plot is basically an exercise in getting to the next sex
scene. That's not necessarily new for the director, but there's not much of the
flair for the weird and taboo that he displayed in much of his earlier work. If
somebody of Massaccei's dubious talents could possibly regress over the years,
China and Sex is evidence of it. It's nothing but terrible dialog and sex
scenes, but if that's what you're looking for, this film has what you're looking
for.

Mya's DVD for China and Sex is a typically mediocre affair from the
label. It features a sub-par full frame transfer that looks better than it might
have on VHS, but not by a whole lot. There's plenty of damage to the print and
any restoration done to it was minimal. The film is fuzzy overall and the colors
are decidedly washed out. The two-channel mono sound isn't much to celebrate,
but it's better than the image. Dialog is clear enough, but any music or
background noise is too diminished to really notice. The only extra is a
trailer.

People who actively seek out the films of Joe D'Amato have no reason to skip
China and Sex. It isn't any better or worse than most of his work and
features some very funny, ultra-pretentious dialog. It's a bad movie, though,
even by exploitation standards, and everybody else should probably skip it.